A Year of Living Dangerously: Dismantling Missile Defense

It has been one year since the 2008 national election. During this period, the cause of missile defense has suffered serious setbacks. The overall budget for missile defense for this fiscal year will be $1.6 billion less than the amount allocated in fiscal year 2009. The number of fielded long-range defense interceptors in Alaska and California will be 30, as opposed to 44. The Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) program for countering decoys and countermeasures designed to overwhelm or confuse the defense has been terminated. The Airborne Laser (ABL) program has been curtailed. The boost-phased interceptor program, called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) has been terminated. Finally, the program to field ground-based interceptors for countering long-range missile in Europe has been canceled.

As bad as the past year has been for missile defense, the future appears even bleaker. The Obama Administration is prepared to subordinate missile defense to its arms control agenda, most particularly President Obama’s desire to achieve global nuclear disarmament. It is also pitting one missile defense program against another, which is likely represents a serial approach to killing most of these programs.

Finally, the Obama Administration is on the cusp of reducing the overall defense budget in fiscal year 2011 in ways that will hit the research and development and procurement accounts particularly hard. These are the accounts that fund the bulk of the missile defense program. Thus, additional funding and programmatic cuts to missile defense are quite likely. Finally, the Obama Administration is likely to justify these reductions in a missile defense policy review that is a part of the broader Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The result is that the American people and forces in the field, as well as America’s allies, will be left vulnerable to missile attack. This is a vulnerability the American people should demand that the government close. After all, the first duty of the federal government is to defend the American people.

Baker Spring is the F.M. Kirby Research Fellow in National Security Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He specializes in examining the threat of ballistic missiles from Third World countries and U.S. national security issues.

Join The Discussion

Is there room in the next defense budget to issue Manderian For Dummies books to all Americans? Also, maybe if we start flying the flags of every rogue terrorist nations in front of all government buildings then rogue leaders will think twice before launching nuclear tiled missles at us? Assuming Obama is thinking ….. What on Earth are you thinking????

Missle Defense technology is growing mature with success after success and creates high quality jobs ….. The threat of Iran and North Korea become more and more profund ….. And Obama caves in the USA's technology advantage? The advantage that has prevented the advent of major World wars and saved endless American soldiers in localized regional wars. Not wise to kill Americas technology and American jobs! Not to mention Americas security and safety from terrorist nations with the atom bomb!

It costs too much to maintain national defense with superior weapons platforms.

It always costs more in the long run, both in human lives and in dollars. History has taught us this.

Why does every dreamer think that somehow, some way that THEY can make it different?

These people know nothing about human nature. They ignore world history; they ignore cultural and political differences that run counter to freedom.

They ignore the fact that the primary responsibility is to defend the Constitution and protect American Citizens.

I guess the only people we need to fear are the foriegn insurgents. Somehow, human and world history changed in a flash and there is no longer any threat to our survival from potentially hostile regimes.

THIS SHOULD BE JUST NO COMMENT BUT ACTION! HOW CAN'T YOU SEE THE WOMAN BEHIND ALL OF THIS, DISMANTLING OUR DEFENSE IN ORDER TO EASILY DEFEAT US IN THE BIG ALTHOUGH SUBTLE ONGOING WAR. 666 MUST LEAVE BEFORE IT'S LATE. WAKE UP SLEEPY GIANTS!!!!!

I agree with Lloyd, President Obama is out to destroy this country. Little by little he is acheiving this. Yesterday, in California he stopped a nuclear waste storage plant from being finished. As the nuclear waste is piling up. He never does one thing to protect our country. He is spending us into disaster, and wasting 1.4 trillion dollars on the way. He will leave us broke, in debt, and unable to defend ourselves. He is setting us up to be taken over! Who is going to stop him!!

The liberal philosophy of human nature, to which Mr. Obama subscribes, is overly optimistic. It ignores the reality of evil, thinking that all things can be 'engineered' to perfection, ignoring history and common sense. In light of this, of course defense spending is being cut.

It is difficult to understand why the big spenders now in power in Washington will spend tens of billions of dollars at the drop of a hat to "spread the wealth around" and laughably talk about how many jobs they have saved or created, but will cut spending on advanced weapons systems in which we have invested billions of dollars for development and which would provide thousands of well-paying jobs to the employees of military contractors and their suppliers. It makes no real-world sense, even politically. It only makes sense when their rabid anti-America and anti-military thinking is considered as a possible motivation.

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